


Can We Talk About the Mail? I’ve Been Dying to Talk About the Mail

by gayfranzkafka



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon, The X-Files
Genre: also Scully's a little OOC but it's the L.A. years am I right?, and saying that is a lot considering i've written some other fairly unhinged things, mail conspiracy theories abound, so writing them slightly OOC is actually still within the style of the show, this is mostly a joke and also the most unhinged thing i've ever written enjoy xoxo, this is my IASIP meets Thomas Pynchon meets X Files fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:40:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25735936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayfranzkafka/pseuds/gayfranzkafka
Summary: A few years after the "Pepe Silvia" incident, Charlie convinces Mac to fly out to L.A. with him to connect with Oedipa Maas, another person who's been locked deep in the annuls of mail conspiracies for years. She invites government agents Mulder and Scully to the gay bar where they're meeting to hear the evidence; the FBI agents are less than convinced. Everyone does tequila shots. Etc etc.
Relationships: implied Mac McDonald/Fox Mulder
Comments: 3
Kudos: 12





	Can We Talk About the Mail? I’ve Been Dying to Talk About the Mail

**Author's Note:**

> CW for L.A. body image issues discussed less-than-delicately because this is Mac & Charlie that we’re talking about. Also for drinking & references to sniffing glue because, again, this is Mac & Charlie that we're talking about.

When Mac walks into Charlie’s apartment it’s dark as shit, despite the fact that it’s about noon. Charlie keeping his curtains closed in the middle of the day is not particularly out of character; it’s really the smell of cigarette smoke that tips Mac off that Charlie’s really gone off the deep end about something again.

“I need you to help me buy two plane tickets to L.A.,” Charlie says by way of greeting, not looking up from some old laptop of Frank’s that he’s hunched over.

“Dude, you know my money is tied up right now,” Mac says. “Rex is helping me develop the Ass Pounder 4000 into a commercial line of exercise bikes.”

“Rex is helping you develop the Ass Pounder 4000 into some sort of gay sex thing. Anyway, I don’t need your money. Frank still hasn’t cancelled the latest credit card I stole from him. I just need you to help me figure out how to use this website. I can’t understand anything this is saying. ‘Phil’? Who’s Phil, and will he help me buy some god damn tickets?” Charlie gestures wildly with the cigarette in his hand as he says this.

Mac walks over to where Charlie is and sits down next to him, looking over his shoulder. “Dude, that’s not ‘Phil’ that’s PHL, as in the airport here. Why the hell do you want to go to L.A. anyway? That’s, like, literally the only place you’ve already been besides here and the Jersey Shore. If you’re trying to expand your horizons or something, shouldn’t you fly somewhere else? Like Disney World?”

“Mac, this is not a _pleasure_ trip for _pleasure_. I am meeting someone who has very important and sensitive information for me. You can’t trust the internet with this stuff, bro.”

“Charlie, are you flying all the way to L.A. just to get laid? Because I’ll admit your game is not good, and it’s true that I know a lot more about the gay bar scene than I do about any of the straight bar bullshit—“

“You _work_ in a straight bar, Mac.”

“But _I_ work there, so I would argue that it’s not _really_ a straight bar in the tradition sense of—“

“Name the last time a dude checked you out at work, Mac. Name the last time a dude checked you out _anywhere_.”

“Okay, well, just last week actually, I was bringing some ice in and this guy complimented my arm muscles, which I have been spending a lot of time on, and—“

“That was Cricket, dude, and you know he’s only gay for pay. That so does not count. Anyway I’m not _trying_ to get laid. This woman has some _information_ for me about certain mail schemes—“

“Certain mail schemes?” Mac says, thinking back to the last time he saw Charlie smoking. “Dude, do not tell me you are back on the mail room bullshit. We haven’t worked there in years!”

“Mac, I never _left_ that ‘mail room bullshit.’ I’ve been digging this whole time! It goes way deeper than I imagined! There’s this whole thing called ‘Turn and Taxes,’ and some play written by a guy named Wharfinger, which maybe you could help me read on the plane—“

“Whoa whoa whoa. Charlie, I am not flying to L.A. with you.”

“Why not? Frank’s paying for it.”

“I thought you hated flying. I thought you hated leaving Philly.”

“I do! That’s why I need you to come with me, bro.”

“Dude, where did you even meet this woman?”

“On the forums,” Charlie says, crossing his arms and looking at Mac like this answer should be obvious.

“The forums? What forums?”

“You know. The forums. You’re the one who showed them to me, when you were trying to get tips on bulking up. There’s the little robot guy and—“

“Reddit? Jesus Christ, Charlie, what kinds of subs are you on?”

“Well, you know, you said I could look up my interests, so I was just putting in stuff like ‘goblins’ and ‘mail’ and I connected with this nice older lady in L.A. who has a _lot_ of information about the mail. This thing goes way deeper than I thought. It’s nation-wide, it’s centuries old. But she’s, like, eighty, so I can’t really ask her to come out here—“

“I am _not_ flying to L.A. with you just so we can listen to some old woman with dementia tell us about how stamps used to cost five cents when she was a kid or something.”

“God, you sound like Dee. Don’t be sexist against old people.”

“I’m pretty sure the word is ‘ageist,’ Charlie, and also I’m not being ageist, I’m just trying to tell you that flying all the way across the country to meet someone who wears dentures is stupid as shit.”

“Mac,” Charlie says, finally looking up from the computer and into Mac’s eyes so he can emphasize his point. “L.A. is, like, _full_ of gay body builders. You know this, don’t you? Even _I_ know this.”

“Why do _you_ know this, Charlie?”

“I’m on the gay forums, too, Mac! I’m trying to be a good ally to you. I’m trying to learn things. And one thing I have learned is that there a lot of hot guys in L.A. And I think you should return the favor and be a good ally to _me_ by coming to L.A. with me.”

“God, fine, Charlie. But only because of the body builders.”

***

“Okay, so we’re meeting her in some bar called ‘The Greek Way,’” Charlie says, unfolding a paper map and squinting at it.

“Dude, what? ‘The Greek Way’? That sounds like some gay shit,” Mac says, scanning the baggage carousel for their suitcases. They’d made it to L.A. without much hassle, aside from the glue that security had pulled out of Charlie’s bag and made him throw away, and the fact that the flight attendant had literally cut Charlie off after he tried to order a sixth cup of coffee on the plane.

“Nah, I’m pretty sure it’s just some frat thing.”

“Dude, why would an eighty-year-old woman be taking us to a frat bar?”

“Why would she be taking us to a gay bar?” Charlie retorts.

“Why are we meeting her in a bar at all, Charlie? I thought we were flying out here because she’s, like, too old to move.”

“She’s not too old to move, she’s too old to fly. And she thinks the nursing home might be bugged.”

“Are you seriously listening to yourself right now?” Mac says to Charlie. “I would love if you would listen to yourself for just one minute. Did we just fly all the way here to meet some looney tunes character who thinks her nursing home might be _bugged_?”

“I don’t see why you’re complaining. If it _is_ a gay bar then we can both get what we want: I can talk to her and you can maybe get laid for the first time in years. Maybe then you’ll calm down.”

“Bro, shut the fuck up,” Mac says, but then he sees their bags and goes to grab them, since Charlie is still staring at the map and not being any help at all. After he comes back with their suitcases in hand, Mac says, “Why the hell are you looking at that thing anyway? I don’t think it’s going to have every bar in L.A. on there. We should just look it up on our phones.”

“I’m off phones,” Charlie says, not looking up from his map.

“You’re off—you’re off _phones_? Okay, well, I’m not,” Mac says, setting the bags down and pulling his own cellphone out of his pocket so he can look up the bar himself. “So I’m just going to—“

But before he can type the name into the maps app, Charlie finally looks up from his map and shrieks, ripping the phone out of Mac’s hand and throwing it onto the baggage carousel.

“Dude, what the _hell_?” Mac says. People are definitely staring at them, but they are both focused only on each other.

“They can track our phones, Mac! You don’t think the government isn’t tracking our phones? Grow up!”

“Dude, I don’t give a _shit_ if the government is tracking me. I paid good money for that phone and I’m a patriot, so I don’t see what kind of problem they would have with me—“

“Oh, only the fact that we are about to blow an underground mail conspiracy _wide open_ ,” Charlie says.

“Okay, well, while you are doing that, _I’m_ going to need my phone so I can use grindr, so if you’ll just—“

Mac tries to make his way back over to the carousel so he can grab his phone the next time it comes around. Charlie, sensing that this is what Mac is trying to do, lunges at him and grabs his leg. What follows is a less-than-dignified scuffle as Mac tries to karate chop Charlie, Charlie bites his arm, Mac puts Charlie in a brief headlock, Charlie knees Mac in the balls, and so forth. Neither of them is able to get the upper hand before security comes over and escorts them both quite forcibly out of the airport. As they are thrown to the curb, Mac tries to tell the guards, “My cellphone is still in there!” but they ignore him. Charlie and Mac are left standing, cellphone-less, on the hot Los Angeles sidewalk.

“This sucks, dude,” Mac says. “We literally came out here so I could meet hot guys and now I have _no_ way of doing that.”

“Uh, if we just _get_ to the gay bar where we’re supposed to be meeting this lady, you can meet hot guys there.”

“Uh, I like to know a guy’s stats before I hook up with him, Charlie!”

“And you think them knowing _your_ stats beforehand is going to make them want to hook up with you?” Charlie says, looking Mac up and down disdainfully. “No way. You might be Philly hot but you’re not L.A. hot. You don’t even have a six-pack. And I _know_ you’re not a top, so what _are_ you even bringing to the table? Your best bet is definitely going to a bar where people are already drunk and maybe desperate.”

“Dude, that is _so_ rude. I have been _working_ on myself, Charlie, which is more than I can say for you, and Rex says that I’ve really upped my game recently, which—“

“Oh my God, shut up about Rex! Just shut up! We are in the middle of mail fraud crisis, I do not have time to listen to you talk about your guy crush.”

“First of all, I don’t have a crush on Rex, but second of all, if I did, it wouldn’t be a ‘guy crush,’ it would just be a ‘crush,’ because saying ‘guy crush’ actually really minimizes—“

“You are so oblivious to your own feelings, dude, but I actually don’t even care as long as you help me read this map,” Charlie says. He’s once again unfolded the map and is looking desperately for The Greek Way. Mac decides he wants to get out of the sun as soon as possible and looks over Charlie’s shoulder, even though he knows the chances of finding the bar on the map are slim to none.

And sure enough, they spend a good ten minutes looking in all the neighborhoods before Mac says, “Dude, it is not on here. We should just ask someone.”

“We can’t _ask_ someone,” Charlie starts to say, but before he can get started on some other rant about how top secret this all is, Mac goes up to a tan dude in flip flops and a bro tank and asks him if he knows how to get to a bar called The Greek Life.

The guy gives Mac a Look before telling him how to get to the bar. After he finishes giving him directions, he raises his eyebrows a little bit and says, “Have fun.”

“Dude,” Charlie says, coming up and grabbing Mac’s arm after the guy leaves, “that was totally stupid. We don’t know who’s on our side, here. That guy definitely looked like he was checking you for bugs or something.”

“I thought we were the ones who were supposed to be worried about being bugged. Now you’re saying the government thinks we’re bugging ourselves?”

“It goes both ways,” Charlie says.

“That literally doesn’t make sense. You need to drink some beer, dude, to counteract all that coffee. Plus, that definitely wasn’t a conspiracy look, that was a gay look. That guy was checking me out.”

“Please,” Charlie says. “In your dreams.”

“Bro, guys hit on me sometimes, okay!”

They are starting to attract stares again, so they decide to make their way to the bus stop before security intervenes again. The bus ride is incredibly long and they have to transfer twice before finally making their way successfully to the bar. As soon as they enter, it becomes clear that is most _definitely_ a gay bar. Amid the sea of men flirting with one another, it’s pretty easy to quickly spot the old woman they’re supposed to be meeting. The only thing is, she’s not alone. At her table are two people in suits, neither of whom look like they belong in the gay bar any more than Oedipa does.

As soon as Charlie sees the suits, he flips out, whispering in Mac’s ear, “Dude, did she bring some fucking _government agents_ in on this? Is she trying to get us arrested?” His voice grows more and more shrill as he continues. “ _Killed?_ We need to get out of here.” He grabs Mac’s arm, but Oedipa seems to have already recognized Charlie and is waving them discretely over to the table. “Okay, okay, let’s just act calm, let’s just go sit down with them, we don’t know if they have guns...”

“Bro, those are probably like her caregivers or something. I don’t think the government cares about the fact that you can’t sort mail because you’re illiterate and that you drank so much coffee one time that you hallucinated,” Mac says, letting Charlie guide him over to the table because he figures, what else is he going to do? Besides, the guy in the suit is kinda cute, if he’s being honest.

“Since when do nursing home workers where suits?” Charlie says.

“I don’t know. Since when do nursing home patients go to gay bars?”

By this time, they’ve made their way over to the table.

“Charlie,” Oedipa says, holding out her hand. Charlie shakes it, all the while giving the two suits the side eye.

“Oedipa,” Charlie says.

“And we’re Fox Mulder and Dana Scully,” the redheaded chick in the suit says, reaching out her hand to Mac, who takes it. “We’re with the FBI.”

At this, Charlie puts his hands up. “I don’t want any trouble!” he says.

Mulder laughs at this. “Hey, we’re on your side,” he says, although Mac notices his partner now giving him the side eye when he makes that comment. “We’re with a special division called the X Files. We investigate all sorts of things – the paranormal, mostly. Trust me when I say that I’m sure we’ve heard much crazier than whatever it is you’re about to tell us.”

Charlie still looks suspicious, but he sits down. Mac, meanwhile, catches a server’s eye as he passes by and says, “Yeah, uh, could we please get some shots over here? Like, five tequila shots please?” he turns to the table and says, “We’re all drinking, right?”

“Uh, I don’t really think this is the situation for that,” Charlie hisses.

“I don’t see why we’re meeting in a _bar_ if we’re not even going to bother to drink. I bet they never let you have any fun at the nursing home, right, Oedipa?”

“I drank a lot of tequila in my day, if you can believe it,” she tells them. “It does certainly help take the edge off things.”

“Well, I won’t be having any,” Scully says, crossing her arms.

“Come on, Scully,” Mulder says. “We should try and fit in with the locals.” He looks down at his suit, then out at the other customers around them, and adds, “I knew I should’ve worn something more… festive. The least we can do is drink. Otherwise we might stick out.”

“You know,” Mac says, clasping his hands together, “I actually have some extra clothes in my suitcase because we didn’t have time to go to the hotel before coming here, and as a gay man myself, I could definitely help you blend in more if you wanted.”

At this point, Charlie interjects, telling the agents, “Please ignore my friend here. He is, uh, a bumbling idiot.”

“No, no,” Mulder says, raising his eyebrows and turning to Scully, speaking almost as if to provoke her, “I think this man’s right. I think we should try and blend in a bit more.”

“Well, uh, great,” Mac said, not having expected Mulder to accept his offer. “Great. So, uh, let’s just make our way to the bathroom, and I can show you some options.” He turns to look at the woman, Scully. “I don’t know what I have for you. I don’t really keep up with lesbian fashion. Now, if Dee were here…”

“It’s quite all right,” she tells him, smiling like it pains her.

“While you’re in the bathroom,” Oedipa tells them as they make they way from the table, “keep a look out for W.A.S.T.E graffiti or the muted post horn symbol.” Out of all of them, she looks the most comfortable, as though meeting up with two government agents and two alcoholics from Philadelphia is just another day for her. Or maybe more like she’s spent so long stuck in various channels of life’s unexplainable absurdities that she no longer questions even the most unprecedented situations that she finds herself in.

“Sorry, is that, like, some sort of weird L.A. sex thing I don’t know about?” Mac says.

Oedipa takes the comment in stride but tells him, “No, no, it’s all part of the underground system. I suppose your friend here didn’t tell you.”

“Oh, he doesn’t get any of this stuff, Oedipa,” Charlie tells her. “It’s worthless to try and explain higher-level stuff like Turn and Taxes to him.”

“That’s ‘Thurn and Taxis,’” Oedipa corrects Charlie.

“Right, right,” Charlie replies. “What I said. Turn and Taxes.”

“Thurn-and-Taxis,” Scully repeats as Mac and Mulder make their way to the bathroom. “You’re aware that that’s a postal system that got disbanded in the mid nineteenth century, right?” As she says this, the waiter brings by the tequila shots and sets them on their table.

“That’s what they _want_ you to think,” Oedipa says, leaning forward.

“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Scully says, raising her eyebrows. “Maybe I really will have a shot. As long as I’m in L.A., right? I feel like me and Mulder always tend to lose our edge whenever we’re down here anyway.”

At this point, Oedipa pulls out a book and opens it up, showing them hundreds and hundreds of stamps. “My ex husband left these to me, along with quite a lot of other things, in his will. If you look, you’ll see they’ve all been altered from official USPS designs. Many of them have the muted post horn.” She points to the corners of some stamps, where there is indeed what looks like a drawing of a trumpet with a mute in it. In other stamps she points out how buildings have been altered or figures added to the background.

“So is that all the evidence you’ve got?” Scully asks. “Some altered stamp designs?”

“I’ve spoken to hundreds of people who have been using Thurn-and-Taxis for decades, still. All sorts of underground groups. Inamorati Anonymous, for one. People who’ve sworn off love. I met one adherent in a bar much like this one decades ago in San Francisco. That was before they franchised it. But I’m interested to hear what you’ve found, Charlie. You said you uncovered a plot at a company where you worked in Philadelphia.”

They are briefly distracted, though, because Mulder and Mac have made it back from the bathroom. Mulder is wearing one of Mac’s bro-tanks and some cut off jean shorts so short the pockets are hanging below the hemline. Mulder does a little spin. “Whadda think, Scully?”

She rolls her eyes. “I think you look like even more of an imbecile than usual.”

“Hey, aren’t those Dennis’ shorts?” Charlie asks.

“I borrowed them,” Mac tells him, as he and Mulder sit down next to each other. Mulder leans over to grab a tequila shot and notices that there’s an empty one in front of Scully. He raises his eyebrows at her. “Drinking on the job? I’m surprised at you.”

“Yes, well, when you hear what these people have to say, maybe you’ll understand why I don’t consider myself on the clock anymore.”

“Boy, L.A. sure has changed you,” Mulder says before doing a shot himself.

“It’s certainly changed _you_ ,” she says, giving his outfit a pointed look.

“This?” Mulder says, looking down at himself. “This is how I’ve always wanted to dress, I just never found the opportunity before. What, you don’t think it suits me?”

“I think you look great,” Mac says before taking a shot himself. Oedipa and Charlie follow suit.

“Well thank you, buddy, that means a lot to me. Now, Charlie, Oedipa. Tell me about this underground mail system of yours,” Mulder says.

“Well, I was about to tell her about what I uncovered,” Charlie says. Mac is looking around for the waiter so he can order another round of shots. “I was working at this company in Philadelphia for a while – well, me and Mac both were – in the mail room. And we started getting all this mail addressed to people who didn’t exist. I’m talking tons of mail. I went around looking for them and it turns out whole _floors_ of this building were vacant. Whole _departments_ just made up. And meanwhile, all this mail coming in. The mail wouldn’t stop.”

“Yes, well, they generally try to deliver the mail every day,” Scully says. “Any idea _why_ they would’ve been fabricating departments like that?”

“Well, no, I never really got that far,” Charlie says. “Isn’t that what you FBI agents are supposed to help me with?”

“We like to have some evidence to start with. Do you _have_ any of this supposedly suspect mail?”

“Well, no it all burned,” Charlie tells her.

“That’s always how it goes,” Mulder says sadly.

“So what’s the name of the company you were working for, again?” Scully asks.

“I, uh—“ Charlie looks to Mac, who also looks lost. “I don’t really remember. Do you—“

“Well, no, I mean, we only worked there, for, like, six days or something,” Mac says.

“Six days?” Scully says incredulously.

“They fired us because they knew we were onto them!” Charlie says.

“No, Charlie,” Mac says. “They fired you because you were burning all their mail.”

“Wait, sorry, _you_ were the one who burned all their mail?” Scully says, giving Mulder a look.

“I told you, it just kept coming! You weren’t there. I’ve never been under so much stress in my life,” Charlie says.

“Yeah, buddy, you’re getting kind of worked up now just thinking about it,” Mac says, taking five more tequila shots from the waiter and handing one to him. “Take this.”

Charlie takes another shot, as does Oedipa. She’s seemed to become increasingly resigned to the fact that Charlie might not have the kind of information she was looking for. Scully asks, “So where do you both work now, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Paddy’s Pub,” Mac says happily.

“So, a bar?” Scully asks.

“Yeah.”

“And do you… often indulge in your own wares?”

“Oh, all the time,” Mac tells her. “We figured out a while ago, when we missed this Boyz II Men concert, that we were alcoholics, so it’s actually more unhealthy for us to _not_ drink than it is for us to drink.”

“As a doctor, I can assure you that that’s not true,” Scully says.

“Well, Charlie’s glue sniffing is probably much worse for him than the alcohol,” Mac says.

“Mac, stop _undermining_ me here!” Charlie says.

At this Scully turns to her colleague and says, “Mulder, this is pretty obviously a symptom of drug-induced paranoia and not anything we need to be looking into.”

“Bro, you have not seen the shit I’ve seen,” Charlie says.

“I don’t know if _you’ve_ even really seen half the ‘shit’ you think you’ve seen,” Scully tells him.

“What?”

“Hallucinations are a common side effect of inhaling toxic chemicals.”

“But surely you’re not also sniffing glue regularly?” Mulder says, turning to Oedipa.

“I’m not,” she says. She tells him again about the stamps, the symbols. “There are pick up stations all over the city. They move around, but they’re always under highway overpasses. If you walk around the city long enough, you’re sure to find them.”

“Scully, I think this is something worth looking into. It makes sense. All sorts of disenfranchised people that either don’t have the skillset to use or don’t trust online encryption but who still want to pass messages securely… think about the information that could be being passed through a system like this, evidence that we wouldn’t necessarily find anywhere else.”

Scully turns back to Charlie and asks, “Where did you and Oedipa meet, again?”

“On the forums,” Charlie says.

“On Reddit,” Mac clarifies.

“See? Mulder, you know Reddit is a hotbed of conservative conspiracy theories with no actual evidence to back them—“

“Hey, I’m a liberal,” Charlie says. “I have a gay best friend. We have gender neutral bathrooms in our bar!”

Oedipa tells Scully, “I’d actually almost prefer it if you agents find conclusive evidence that this is all a scam. It could be my ex husband putting me on, all these years after he’s been laid in the grave…”

“Well, fine, Charlie, there’s been some recent studies anyway that shows that conservatives aren’t any more pre-disposed to believe in conspiracy theories than liberals,” Scully says. “I appreciate that Oedipa at least seems to retain some sort of critical lens. But Charlie, just because you’ve got a gay friend doesn’t mean you’ve spent any sort of time putting in the thought required to make some sort of meaningful commentary on larger societal systems. And Mulder, I’m just as skeptical of the government as you are, but I think sometimes you fail to acknowledge that conspiracy-theory thinking can be just as dangerous as religious adherence to American patriotism.”

There’s a silence for a minute, then Mulder says, “Yeah, but Scully, it’s not as _fun_ to not follow through the thread of every conspiracy within the last two-hundred years.”

“Yeah, bro, what about fun?” Mac says. At this, he and Mulder take a second shot.

“Look, Mulder,” Scully says, crossing her arms, “if you want to go hang out under a few L.A. underpasses, I’m not going to stop you, but I feel like that’s something you can do without me.”

“Underpasses can be very dangerous,” Mac says to Mulder. “I’m actually not just an owner, I’m also the bouncer at our bar back in Philly, and I know all kinds of martial arts, so if you wanted me to come along as some sort of, like, body guard, I mean, I’d be more than happy—“

“Mac!” Charlie says. “Oh my God! Stop trying to seduce my FBI agent!”

“He’s not _your_ FBI agent, Charlie. You said yourself if we went to this bar you could meet Oedipa and I could get laid. Well, you’ve met Oedipa, so I think it’s only fair…”

“Oh, come on, Mulder,” Scully interjects. “You’re not seriously going to take this lug head with you, are you? That seems like highly unprofessional behavior.”

“Yes, well, when in Greece…” Mulder says, taking a good, long look at Mac’s arms. “I mean, the man’s buff, that much is evident. If you’re not going to come along and protect me I might as well…” He waits as if for Scully to make a retort, but she says nothing.

“What did I tell you, Charlie?” Mac says. “I _have_ been working out and it _is_ paying off.”

Charlie just rolls his eyes. “Fine! Go have your gay FBI mail heist! This guy obviously knows jack shit anyway. Me and Oedipa can keep talking.”

But Oedipa gives Charlie a disgruntled look and says, “I’m afraid this is just another loose end that has led me nowhere.” As Mac and Mulder begin to make their way out of the bar, she gets up and begins to leave as well.

Charlie turns to Scully and asks, “Buy you a drink?”

“Oh, absolutely not,” she tells him and takes her second tequila shot to another table, leaving Charlie alone in the bar.

**Author's Note:**

> As we all know, the only _actual_ mail conspiracy in the U.S. is Trump fucking with the USPS so mail-in ballots won't be counted, so make sure to mail yours in early!


End file.
